In the Government Building the departments of War, Agriculture, and the Interior, and the National Museum required each a space of about 20,000 feet; while the National Fisheries Commission, the Post-office, and the departments of State, Justice, and the Treasury, with the other public offices, each demanded spaces varying from 18,000 to 1600 feet. These departments combined demanded about 148,000 feet of floor-space, with consider able additional accommodation for offices of administration, and special collections in galleries. These considerations dictated for the building a length of 420 feet on the axial line, to which we have referred, and a width of 350. The naval exhibit is to be held in a separate structure, built in the lake, east of the National Building, on the exact model of a first-class modern armored battle-ship, fully equipped and manned, lying alongside a mole extended from the shore. The level area between the building and the lake provides outside accommodation for a model marine hospital, for the apparatus and daily exercise of a life-saving station, for a naval observatory, for the experimental plantation and irrigation exhibit of the Agricultural Department, and for the parade-ground of an encampment of United States troops. The Lighthouse Board has its exhibit at the end of the pier of which we have spoken.

For the main building of the Government exhibit the supervising architect of the Treasury Department, Mr. W. J. Edbrooke, conceived a structure occupying the entire area of which we have spoken in such a manner as to obtain a vast uninterrupted hall, in which whatever subdivisions might be required should be effected by partitions having no structural significance. By six ranges of columns set 25 feet on centers he secured support for seven parallel longitudinal aisles, each 50 feet wide, of which four, including the outer aisles, are high, with pitched or gabled roofs, and the other three, alternating with these, are low with segmentally arched roofs, over which the high aisles obtain a well-distributed light throughout the interior by a range of clearstory windows. These longitudinal aisles are crossed transversely in the center by a higher transept, consisting of a nave, or main hall, 40 feet wide, flanked by double 20-foot aisles.

From a decorative point of view, it was evident that a lofty central, culminating feature must be introduced, of sufficient importance to confer peculiar distinction upon an architectural composition which must stand among the other buildings of the Exposition as an adequate representative of national dignity. The architect, therefore, built in the center of this

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complex of longitudinal and transverse roofs a dome 120 feet in diameter and 25 feet high from the floor, so that it should dominate the wide-spreading and comparatively low-lying mass of the building from every point of view. Below the roofs this domical structure appears in the middle of the great hall as a central octagonal tribune, or chamber, of which each side, 50 feet wide, is pierced by an arch; above the roof it assumes the form of a sixteen-sided drum, or podium, decorated on each face with an order of coupled arched windows between pilasters, from which spring the ribs of a dome 78 feet high, embellished by lucarnes. A lofty lantern completes the upward movement of the sky-lines, and a corbeled, aërial balcony is introduced as the base of the lantern to give animation and lightness to this most sensitive part of the design.

The architectural character of the inclosing walls of the building must of course depend upon the skill with which the architect has made use of the suggestions of the general plan. The requisite height for a great hall 420 by 350 feet, with galleries across the north and south ends and in the aisles of the transept, gives 45% feet as the general height of the façades, above which is placed a balustrade to mask the roof-system. We have seen that the loftiest part of this roof-system is in the transept. This feature compels recognition in the central pavilions of the long east and west fronts, which become the principal portals of the building. Each of these pavilions is composed of five members or divisions, corresponding in position and width to the transept and its two aisles on each side. The three central divisions are carried 30% feet, and the two outer divisions 6 feet, higher than the main cornice. All finish with level sky-lines, but the three middle divisions are crowned, the central one by a typical group of figures, and the other two by national eagles mounted on octagonal pedestals. The idea of the portal is adequately expressed by a central arch, occupying the whole width of the transept, and springing from the level of the main cornice of the building, which is continued across all the pavilions as a stringcourse.

The structure and dimensions of the outer longitudinal aisles developed in elevation produce a curtain-wall in four 25-foot bays, coincident with the spacing of the columns within, each bay being treated with a great arched window, divided horizontally by a transom or string-course, corresponding with the level of the interior galleries and continued all around the façades. These bays are separated by buttress-piers of slight projection, and on each angle of the building a corner pavilion, 50 feet square, covered with a low square dome, is nat

urally evolved from the conditions of the plan. Each front of these corner pavilions has a glazed arched opening set between two narrow subordinate pavilions. On the north and south fronts the gable-ends of the longitudinal aisles produce an architectural composition wherein the three central aisles are expressed in a boldly projecting triple entrance-pylon, carefully subordinated to the main entrances on the east and west fronts, the outer aisles in two corner pavilions, and the intermediate lower aisles in a correspondingly depressed frontage 50 feet wide, covered with an ornamented segmental gable, following the roof-lines. Thus it will be seen that the main features of the façades are the direct decorative or architectural expression of the plan, and the design, as a composition of masses, is articulate and reasonable.

The Government architectural office, which designs and constructs more great buildings than any ten private architectural offices in the world, can accomplish its prodigious work only by traditions which are the result of organization and discipline. These traditions have assumed form, more or less definite, under the administration of a succession of supervising architects, who, having found it physically impossible to give to each of the forty or fifty public monuments always simultaneously developing under their charge the study and thought necessary to a work of art, have been constrained to establish formulas of design by which, with the assistance of intelligent and trained subordinates, work might be produced which, if necessarily cold and conventional, should at least be orderly and have the merit of correctness. The characteristics of most of our national buildings may be explained by the conditions under which they have been designed, and therefore no one thinks of regarding them as the corresponding structures in other civilized nations are regarded-as the highest and most deliberate expressions of national genius in architecture. They are big, costly, and, for the most part, soundly built of the most perfect materials, and with the best workmanship; but with some few exceptions, it has been practically impossible for them to exhibit those qualities of refinement, beauty, and fitness which can come only from special artistic study, and from that sort of inspiration which results from taking pains. They represent our talent for organization, but not our talent for art. The efforts of the American Institute of Architects to obtain legislation whereby the designs for Government buildings may, by direct selection, or by some adequate and just method of competition, be thrown into the hands of the best architects of the country-as is the case among other civilized nations-should, for these reasons, have the warm sympathy

and coöperation of all who desire to see this great nation take its proper rank in the history of architecture. Until this is done, our national monuments will continue to be significant rather of our wealth than of our art.

The present architect of the Treasury Department, handicapped, as he is, by prodigious preoccupations and responsibilities, is to be congratulated on what he has been able to accomplish in the architectural outlines of the Government Building. We have seen that its main features are coördinate in plan and elevation; that a well-ordered project has been outlined with every proper regard for symmetry, for lighting, for economical structure, and for the due relation of important to inferior parts; and that as a whole the masses are well balanced. The design is based on Renaissance formulas, but, in respect to detail, when compared with the other buildings of the Exposition in the same style, it will be found to have the true Government stamp. The mind of the master has dictated successfully the general scheme, but the detail, in its facile but crude invention, in its profuse but unimaginative use of conventional phrases and symbols, betrays the fact that it has been developed officially and without the benefit of the master's honest and patient study. The fruits of such study, in the designs of most of the other buildings, which unavoidably challenge comparison with it, are visible in their intelligent respect for historical precedent, and in their knowledge of its proper use in the evolution of modern work, in the refinement and purity of their lines, in the clearness and delicacy of their expression, in their reserve of power, and in the fastidious conscience which has patiently chastened and corrected, has been prodigal of labor in rejecting and amending, and has thus made the work sensitive, elegant, and scholarly. The design of these buildings developed slowly in what Matthew Arnold would call an atmosphere of "sweetness and light." In fact, the organized division of labor in the office of the Government architect must of necessity be fundamentally inimical to the cultivation of true artistic feeling. The work which has resulted, with some few notable exceptions perhaps, constitutes a class by itself, peculiarly mechanical and automatic in character, and, for the most part, destitute of that sort of interest which comes from individuality of expression, and from studious adaptation to conditions of use, site, climate, materials, and environment. This official administration of design, whereby the public work is turned off with the most businesslike expedition, has played no unimportant part in the creation or encouragement of a certain architectural vernacular in our country, through the baneful imitations of untrained architects in private

practice. This vernacular will continue to be a reproach to us until the true artist has had opportunity to express himself in our public monuments with the same deliberation which he has shown, and is showing, in his private work, and thus to create a school for a more healthy cultivation of style. Whatever qualities of individuality may have characterized and given interest to the private work of the Government architects, before and after they have taken upon themselves the burden of this office, these qualities have almost invariably disappeared while under the powerful influence of the Government system. These gentlemen have been like the Greek artists, who lost their peculiar and delicate power when they became the servants of Roman masters. They have been compelled to content themselves with the show and not the substance of art, and to acknowledge as their own a succession of cold and formal official monuments, in which the smallest amount of design has to do the largest service by unimaginative but costly repetitions, and which differ one from the other only by reason of the amount of the appropriation in each case, and, to a certain extent, because of the difference in their requirements, not according to the personal quality of the architect who has given to them the respectability of his name. He has laid aside his function as an artist, and has become a creature of politics, of administration, of classifications, and of formalisms.

If our Government could place the designing of its buildings in the hands of architects

who have proved their ability to do justice to such great opportunities for professional distinction, the art of architecture would not only receive the encouragement which is due to it from one of the most enlightened nations of the world, but our public monuments would at last adequately express our civilization. In England, in France, in Germany, and, indeed, in all the great European countries, the public buildings are their highest and most characteristic efforts in art. It is the ambition of every architect to make himself worthy to be employed upon them. They constitute the great prizes of the profession. We cross the Atlantic to see the cities which they have made beautiful. In our own country enough of treasure has been appropriated for national buildings, and spent on them, to make our cities equally noble and attractive. But under the present system these opportunities have been worse than lost; for they have encouraged an unnecessary extravagance of expenditure without adequate return, and they offer no higher type to be accepted as the expression of our civilization than respectable conventionality and organized commonplace.

If the suggestive contrasts of quality in the buildings of the Exposition should serve no higher purpose than as an object-lesson to our legislators, teaching them that their responsibilities in respect to our national architecture are not properly discharged by maintaining a costly architectural factory in Washington, the unsubstantial pageant of Jackson Park will not have been in vain. Henry Van Brunt.

W. J. Henderson.

N August sun was beating down on Strathboro'. The little town wore a strange aspect. An intelligent bird, coming from afar, and flying over houses, yards, and gardens, might have realized something curious in the look of things.

The square surrounding the court-house and lined with shops was utterly deserted; the shopshutters were generally up, and the court-house, which had no shutters, showed the need of them in many a shattered pane of glass, which gave it an air of degraded desolation. Both in the square and beyond, grass and weeds overgrew, in a disorderly, squalid way, many an unaccustomed spot. The ample gardens behind the houses were oftener a tangle of luxuriant untrained growths; the asparagus-beds flung out their feathery foliage in great spreading masses, and against them the ironweed and ragweed and Jamestown-weed grew tall and lusty, and among these climbed wild morning-glories. At one side, perhaps, would be a little patch of cultivated ground, where a few sweet-potatoes and a little corn took up most of the room.

Not a man was to be seen anywhere, but now and again a sunbonneted woman, or several sunbonneted women together, would pass from one house to another.

Inside the houses, or on their shaded galleries, groups, still altogether feminine, were gathered, talking with an air curiously uniting listlessness and restlessness, apathy and anxiety.

The truth was, they had special immediate cause for fear, but they suffered so long and so much in similar ways, that in many the capacity for keen feeling was blunted. Yet they would have told you that they suffered none the less because they suffered dully.

It was in 1863. The Federal forces under General Paine were in possession of this part of Tennessee, and their headquarters were at Tullahoma, not fifteen miles away.

Strathboro' had been well stripped of men for many a day, even the fourteen- and fifteenyear-old boys were away fighting; but until this morning a few male persons were to be seen about, and though usually they were old or sick or deformed, the sight was a comfort to the weary eyes of the womankind. Rightly or wrongly, they now involuntarily felt as never before the superiority of the dominating sex; it was they who were fighting out this war, and even the least awe-inspiring man represented

the power that carried Fate in its hand. And now, to-day, here they were, left without a man

-a white man, that is—in Strathboro'. No, not literally without one; Uncle Billy Caldwell, aged eighty-two, still sat at home in his big chair, quivering and bewildered, and Blossier, the Frenchman, was also left behind.

This peculiar state of things was brought about by General Paine in his efforts to stop sudden rebel raids upon his bridges, railroads, and telegraph-wires. These attacks were always made, and the offenders gone, before punishment could reach them, and, under fresh provocation, General Paine had conceived the idea of holding the few remaining and helpless male citizens of Strathboro' responsible for the doings of the soldiers he could not catch. So, this morning an armed squad had descended upon the disheartened little town, and had marched off to Tullahoma the lame, the halt, and the blind. Falstaff's army was a robust body compared to this handful of mutinous spirits.

Uncle Billy Caldwell was not only eightytwo, but he weighed nearly three hundred pounds; if taken, he was obviously sure to die on the way, and that would inevitably cause some delay and inconvenience, so it was plainly discreet that he be left behind: but as to the Frenchman, there was no logical reason for the leniency shown him; it was simply that the Anglo-Saxon conquerors had, in common with the Anglo-Saxon conquered, so deep a feeling of his foreignness that he seemed outside of humankind. The question of taking him to Tullahoma was dismissed with a grin, as it might have been had it referred to one of Uncle Billy's ancient hounds. But old Blossier himself, naturally, took no such view of the matter. He understood English very imperfectly, but he believed that France was honored in his person; and he had his ragged straw hat pressed to his bosom as he bowed low to the officer in command, before beginning to express, as best he could, between the two languages, his gratified sense of their regard for la belle France, when lo, he raised his head, and officer and men were gone, hurrying, backs toward him, up the street!

Strathboro' people would have considered old Blossier crazy if they had not felt, obscurely, that such an opinion included an admission that he had once been sane-an admission so unthinkable that they contented themselves with explaining everything on the ground that he was a Frenchman.

Yes, he was a Frenchman; that was still clear to even his poor confused brain, though little else autobiographical was. He was not old in years, not much more than forty, but the adjective was more than an epithet: it was descriptive of his relation to life. How he had drifted to Strathboro' he would have found it hard to tell. He had dim memories of barricades and dangers, and swelling emotions in his youth, and he cherished them, and around them gathered vague sentiments of patriotism that still stirred within him at the mention of France and of liberty; but the changes of the years had been too much for his powers of synthesis. He had been hustled through too many and too varied scenes; he could not untangle the coil of memory; he was confused; he gave it up; he lived on from day to day.

For five years he had so lived in Strathboro'. He maintained himself by doing odd jobs of many kinds, nursing the sick, laying out gardens-particularly flower-gardens-and tending them, mending furniture, painting indoor woodwork, making odd toys-children particularly adored them. In fact, he did all these things and others uncommonly well, else, in this slave-owning community, he would have had nothing to do. He never had much, and the war had not increased his income; but he lived, someway, in the queer little hut he had built himself in a worn-out, abandoned field at "the edge of town," and he had so far redeemed a portion of the exhausted land as to have a flourishing bit of garden at his door, which of course was a great help for the summer. He did not return in kind the good-natured, curious contempt Strathboro' felt for him. No, in his muddled way he was cosmopolitan, and felt for his neighbors a regard that in some cases was almost affection; and now to-day as he stood in the middle of the old turnpike and watched his feeble and saddened fellow-townsmen as they started with their armed escort upon their long, hot march, his heart yearned with anxiety for them. He had nursed Mr. Patten through that spell of typhoid fever that had left him so weak; he remembered Jimmie Pembroke's broken leg, never properly set, and how much walking always started it hurting; he looked up at the lofty head of old Judge Caldwell with pitying awe, and wondered how the soldiers could thus humiliate dignity and worth: but it was when his eye turned back to the hollow-eyed, staring women, hanging over gates, and out of windows, and forth from gallery steps to see the last of the prisoners, that his feelings choked him. He alone was left to care for them.

In after years this whole incident took a humorous tone in Strathboro' traditions, but the comical side of it was pretty well lost sight

of at the time. Several citizens, on suspicion of aiding in the depredations of soldiers and bushwhackers, had been shot recently in that same Tullahoma camp, and now the wrathful general was swearing that he would keep his communications open if he had to kill every man along the whole line of the railroad. The sunlight seemed a glare rather than a radiance in Strathboro' that day.

Over the hill the marching men passed out of sight, leaving a faint trail of dust, like smoke, behind them. Blossier went up the street and stopped at Mrs. Pembroke's gate. She was a widow, and Jimmy, whose lame leg Blossier so sorrowfully remembered, was her only son. She sat on her front steps, her gray, disordered head in her hands. Blossier bared his, as he stood there, silent.

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"Oh, they did n't take you!" was Miss Catherine's salutation when she finally saw him. Non, madame, I rest here for to protect ze ladies. I am rejoice to aid you of any manière. Zee government regard my country, voilà je— how you say -I is here. Command Blossier, madame."

"There ain't anything you can do," said Miss Catherine, wearily, and she got up and went into the house; she thought it hard that she must be bothered by old Blossy just then.

As evening drew on, Blossier reflected that in the long silent stretch of the night would lie the severest trial to "the ladies'" strained nerves. He put himself in their place, and conjured up what he conceived to be the fears hovering in their imaginations. His good offices had not been rejected always, during the day. He had helped one woman with her fretful sick child, he had brought wood and water for others who were deserted by their servants; but what could he do at night?

He was sitting in his cabin, gazing westward into a serene, cloudless, primrose sky; as he got up and turned indoors, his eye fell on a queer, big something in a dark bag in a dusky corner - he had an inspiration! In that bag was an old viol, a double-bass, a relic of a time, draped in the mists of antiquity, when Blossier had "assisted" in a theatrical orchestra.

Perhaps few musical instruments are less adapted to the purposes of a strolling serenader than a double-bass; but as Blossier caught sight of his, it was to a night of serenading that he dedicated it. He would systematically patrol the town, and from that double-bass should issue strains assuring the poor ladies that a friend was near and on the watch.

To be sure, as he considered the scheme, he felt keenly the limitations of a double-bass. He knew that his was not even good of its kind. He had regretted before that Fate, at the time she made music his resource, had not thrown a